Math Behind Climbing Ranked Games

Last Updated: December 4th 2014

Are you stuck in the same rank even after playing for months? The following math will tell you why.

Are you an avid League of Legends Player? If you have played at least 30 ranked games, please go check your win rate right now. I would like to mention that the average win rate in the ranked community is 50% so don't be so disappointed if your win rate is low.

For every 20 games, you will have the following net outcome in wins with the respecitve win rates

  • 52.5% (10.5 wins / 9.5 loses) = 1 win of difference (A decent player) [where you're probably at right now]
  • 55.0% (11.0 wins / 9.0 loses) = 2 wins of difference (A very skilled player)
  • 57.5% (11.5 wins / 8.5 loses) = 3 wins of difference (An expert) [your goal after reading this guide]
  • 60.0% (12.0 wins / 8.0 loses) = 4 wins of difference (A notable One-Trick-Pony)
  • 65.0% (13.0 wins / 7.0 loses) = 6 wins of difference (A player in Challenger)
  • 70.0% (14.0 wins / 6.0 loses) = 8 wins of difference (A Diamond IV player playing in Bronze)
  • 75.0% (15.0 wins / 5.0 loses) = 10 wins of difference (A Diamond I player playing in Bronze)
  • 80.0% (16.0 wins / 4.0 loses) = 12 wins of difference (InvertedComposer playing Singed in Bronze)
  • 90.0% (18.0 wins / 2.0 loses) = 16 wins of difference (A Challenger playing in Bronze)

How much LP do you gain per game? Say you either win or lose 20LP. If you have 52.5% win rate and you play 20 games,

  • Your net gain is only 20LP (1 win) so
  • You will have to play 100 games just to get to the series at this rate!
  • This is true if you consistently have 52.5% win rate!!

With 55% win rate,

  • You will advance twice as fast because your net gain is 40LP (2 wins)

57.5% is

  • 60LP (3 wins)

60% is

  • 80LP (4 wins)

And so on...

Diamond players that train their smurfs advance quickly to Diamond because they have about 70% win rate as they climb which means they advance 8 times quicker than a player with 52.5% win rate. In addition, the Diamond players play much more than a regular player so they will also make more progress.

So how can you climb the rank at least 4 times more than now?

You have 2 options but one would seem more rewarding than another. If you play 2 games a day and you have 52.5% win rate:

  1. You can quadruple your play time from 2 games to 8 games a day
  2. You can increase your win rate from 52.5% to 60%

Choosing one of the options will increase your rank climbing progress by 4 times more! Or you can take both of the options and make 4x4 = 16 times more progress!!!

Whoa... does that mean I can make a month of progress in only 2 days??
YES!!

Ah, so to climb the rank faster you can either play more or by having more effective games! Now here are some very good tips of winning games:

Increasing Your Win Rate Tips

If you follow most of these steps, raising your win rate from 52.5% to 57.5% is no sweat! As a result, you will make 3 times more progress in climbing the rank than before.

  1. Always play with your best champions
  2. Never play when you are tired, angry, or depressed (Important)
  3. Dodge queue if you don't get the role you need to play
  4. Don't risk to play if you think your internet is unstable
  5. Optimize on your Runes, Masteries, and Item builds before you play (Very Important)
  6. Evaluate on your champion's strengths and try to pick fights to your advantage (kiting, trading hits, pokes, all-out, pushing, etc)
  7. Don't repeatedly make mistakes and be patient (hug tower and skip cs when you are being camped, etc)
  8. Complete your items instead of buying multiples of basic and advanced items (As final items are much more powerful)
  9. Take down an enemy tower by level 12 and start roaming
  10. Avoid getting caught by enemies and also do not die together when your ally gets caught
  11. Spam alert ping to direct your teammates in making the right decisions
  12. Do not surrender and tell your teammates that surrendering is not acceptable in ranked
  13. Take 10 minutes break in between games (Easily achivable by afking until minions spawn)
  14. Play a warm up game before jumping into a ranked game (A game of dominion or ARAM maybe?)
  15. If you are the most fed player in your team, take the responsibility of carrying your team and never make a bad move for the rest of the game
  16. If you lose 2 games in a row, call it a day. Majority of people queuing up at this time might be tryhards so you automatically fall below their skill level
  17. Dodge queue when someone in your team is "trying out" a champion
  18. Tell your jungler to focus on the other lanes if you are confident with your own lane

Sometimes it might be tempting to play when you are tired or when you don't get the champion you need to play but you must not play in those situations!

If you do then you are essentially playing the game to lose and it will count as doing negative work!!

And as for tip #5, building your champion optimally significantly increases your champion's performance. You want to get the most out of your hard earned gold and never less. You don't want to be weaker despite spending 6k gold on items compared to someone that has spent only 5k gold, do you?

You have now learned how important it is to raise your win rate to make more progress in ranked.

Also Good luck in Solo Queue!